Over the weekend, the two leading March Madness applications saw a large jump in their active users as Facebook users prepare for the upcoming NCAA Touranment. Watercooler’s 2009 Bracket Challenge saw a large jump in their active user base to over 111,000 users. The CBSSports.com tournament application saw a jump of over 22,000 users.

We’ll most likely see numerous other bracket applications released over the coming week but these two applications have already launched and have seen an uptick in active users. Last time around some developers complained when CBSSports.com received premium promotional placement over the news feed for a few days. While that promotion has not yet begun, we’re guessing that we’ll see something similar again.

With March only a week away, users are ramping up as March Madness is typically an active time for Facebook given their close to 100 percent market saturation among college students. The applications typically attract millions of users and this year will most likely be no different. This weekend was just the beginning of the promotions.

Last year we saw over 20 applications targeted to the March Madness crowd with Watercooler and CBSSports.com leading the pack. While Watercooler is currently leading, we’ll have to see if Facebook’s annual promotions pop-up once again. Last year there was significant controversy over whether or not the CBSSports.com application reviews were actually posted by users.

At one point posting reviews of your own application with fake user accounts was becoming a standard practice. Hopefully by now we’ve grown out of application review arguments. For now we’ll have to wait and see as March Madness is just beginning to heat up.